


6th and Williams

by quigonejinn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 15:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18640687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: An hour passes, and so does the rain.





	6th and Williams

**Author's Note:**

> This fills in some missing scenes in **Avengers: Endgame** , so it's full of **spoilers**.

You wait in the dark.

...

You wait in the cold.

...

You wait in the wet, but because Sarah Rogers raised you, and you have the sense that growing up hard in Brooklyn entails, after a moment, you step out of the rain and under the porch.  After all, this time, you aren't in the ice. 

An hour passes, and so does the rain.  A postman comes up the pathway. You wonder if he might recognize you -- after all, you were in bond drives and newsreels -- but with experience, you've learned that people have a hard time placing faces out of context. Still, he takes a long, hard look at you, assessing the size and breadth of you, the fact that you aren't in uniform, and your hair isn't regulation, but you've been fighting wars one way or another for a long, long time.  

There is a beat-looking suitcase by your feet, definitely the worse for wear after the rain.

"Europe or the Pacific?" 

"Mostly Europe," you say. 

"Missed each other at the train station?"

"Something like that."

"If you want to leave a note, there's a diner half a mile away on Dundas Street.  You could wait for her there. Get a cup of coffee." 

"Thanks. I'm fine here."  

...

School lets out.  Kids walk past in groups of two or three.  This is a nice neighborhood, different from the places where you grew up, and after a while, folks start to come home from work, big cars, new-looking cars.  Some walk, but most people drive. You wonder at the state of gasoline rationing. Dusk comes late in a wave of insect noise, and even in the twilight, birds call to each other. A kid goes flying past on his bike, riding the wrong way and pedaling furiously.     At the closest intersection, one sign reads _6th_ and the other reads _Williams_

__

__

You sit in the rocking chair and watch lights come on in the place across the way, the place next door come on.  People have dinner. The lights go off. Trees sigh to themselves in the night. 

...

The idea gained words in the moment before you came face to face with yourself on that elevated walkway, but it has been growing for a long time, somewhere between the skin over your chest and the bone underneath.  A whisper, a feeling. At moments, it would reach out beyond there, and catch you in a distorted reflection or a fragment of conversation, overhead in passing. Nat dies, and you call the hammer to you across the greatest battlefield in Earth's history.  You channel lightning and pin Thanos to the ground, even if only for a heartbeat. You step back into the time travel grid, and you place six stones back where they belong.

Somewhere between the fourth and the sixth stone, the words became real, and once they did, you knew where you would go after the last. 

... 

In the morning of the next day, a woman comes to clean the house.   She could be a few years north of forty, or she could be sixty. A certain kind of hard work does that to people.  Her hair is underneath a kerchief, and you stand up when you see her coming up the driveway, stooping briefly to pick up the newspaper.

"Ma'm," you say, taking the mop and bucket from her.  She lets you take them, because the stairs are hard for her.  When she gets up to the porch, she takes the mop and bucket back from you, and gives you a hard look in the face.  

"Who're you?"

"A friend of Margaret," you say, knowing the name that is on the letters.  You worked with her in the field, after all. You know the aliases she prefers: it's how you found her address. 

"You been waiting a while?"

"Since yesterday."

"Is she expecting you?"

"I don't think so." 

Her accent is, you think, Polish.  Maybe.   She gives you another long, hard look, then unlocks the front door with a key that she has.  She shuts the door without offering to let you in, and you settle back on the chair on the porch.  After a while, you hear her turn on the radio to cover the fact that she is calling Peggy's office. 

...

A decent interval afterwards, a gray car passes the block.  Then, it comes back a second time. 

Both times, it keeps driving.  Each time, you track it with your eyes, still hearing the vacuum cleaner running in the back as the cleaning woman works.  The sound of it shifts slightly, though. The pitch goes just a touch higher, and then stays that way -- propped against a door or a handy wardrobe, you think.   You aren't surprised when fifteen minutes later, the front door unlocks, soft as soft, and then swings open with just a touch more noise. 

"I'll shoot you through this screen door if I have to," the voice says, and you turn around, slowly, hands up. 

Her face crumples, but the hand stays steady.  "I swear to God, Stark, if this is your way of testing out some new technology -- "

"Peggy," you say, softly. 

Then, you say it again, because you've waited so long to say her name while looking at her, and not a picture pasted into your compass.  "Peggy." 

She lets a long, breath out and lowers the gun.  She puts the safety back on, and puts it on the table by the door.  "You're supposed to be in a plane in the Arctic."

"In a way, I am."

...

Because Peggy is English, the two of you end up in the kitchen, drinking hot, strong tea with plenty of sugar and plenty of milk  She goes upstairs to turn the vacuum cleaner off after the kettle is on, Maja having slipped out the back door at the signal. 

The two of you sit down.   She explains that she just got back into the SSR Facility this morning from California.  That's why she didn't come home the other night. You break the news to her about HYDRA and how deep the rot goes in the future. 

"And that's why you came back?  To stop it?"

"To tell you."  

She looks at you.  Now that the shock has worn off, now that she really believes you, the anger is coming, too.    

"I thought you were in the ice in the Arctic.  I heard you go down. We were on the radio -- it's August now.  Howard spent the whole summer at sea, looking for you." 

"I know.  I read the records.  And I am in the ice in a way."  

"Howard doesn't find you.  Nobody finds you for -- sixty years."

"Almost seventy."

"What else do you know?"

"I know that you become the first director of the agency that succeeds the SSR."  

...

After a while, she asks, "Do I get married?"

"Yes."

"Is it happy?"

"Very.  From everything you tell me, he was a good man.  He loved you. He probably loves you now."

"Children?"

"Grandkids, too." 

She doesn't ask if that will stay the same, now that you're back, now that you've told her -- her mind has moved onto something else.  "But HYDRA comes back on my watch. Into my agency." 

Now, her expression is hard, and you look back at her.  You know that you look older than she remembers. She looks exactly as you remember her, with all the vividness that the Super-Soldier Serum brings: the same power that let you remember the score and date of a Brooklyn Dodgers game from years before.  Did you really need a photograph all those years? 

...

You set the vial of Pym particles on the table between the two of you. 

You don't have to stay.  You offer: you could tell her everything you know and go back.  

...

She steps away.   

After a while, you hear the radio in the parlor turn on.  The first station is news, but she changes the station. A daytime drama. She changes the station again.  Now, it's music, but something fast, with swing to it. Then she changes it one more time. 

After a long, long moment to make sure she means it, you push the chair back from the table.  You open the pocket doors in between the parlor and the kitchen, and Peggy is standing on the other side, golden with afternoon light from the window. You could make a comment about the Stork Club, and so could she, but neither of you do.  Is it even important?  Do either of you need it? 

You step through.  You take her hand. 

She tilts her head up, and you kiss her, quiet and slow.  After all, you have seventy years.  

...

You stay.  

 


End file.
